Uncanny Parallel
by Katarina Krahe
Summary: It's strange, how much alike total strangers can be... 'Even their cooking tasted the same.'


Uncanny Parallel

_or, Beware the Soup_

He watched them, the sister and her brother, so like the pair he had known before... before everything, really. Both half-elves, trying to break apart from the stigma their race had set on them; both intelligent, caring beings; both mages, one a healer, one what was termed a 'black mage;' both without parents, the brother raised by his sister, the only family he had ever truly known.

And yet, so unlike them at times that he wondered if the only similarity they shared was in their heritage. The sister was obsessed with ruins and knowledge, and that was putting it lightly; the brother was a genius and a smart-aleck who often got himself smacked for his cheeky tongue. But from there it would be back to the old parallel, the green-haired woman bopping the blond over the head with a soup spoon as he tried to get the cookpot away from her, the silver-haired woman smacking the boy with the silver-blue hair as he attempted to stop her attempts at making 'food.'

Even their cooking tasted the same.

He barely suppressed a chuckle even as the sister set a bowl in front of him, spoon standing upright in the 'soup.' That alone should say something for the food. He gingerly attempted to remove the spoon, and after judicious application of his angelic strength, the utensil came free with a horrendous slurping noise. Looking around, he saw that the others were either having similar trouble or resorting to forks.

Gazing askance at the ... goo ... dangling from the spoon, he decided to chance it. It wasn't as though it would kill him.

After tasting the substance, he was less sure. Exceedingly bitter, with a hint of sourness and just the barest accent of salt, assailed his taste buds, causing his eyes to water and his gag reflex to kick in. Valiantly, he swallowed several times, ridding his mouth of the source of the offending taste, but the sourness multiplied into an exceedingly unpleasant aftertaste.

Running through a series of foul curses in Angelic (in his head, of course, he didn't need the questions that would raise), he found a container of water and practically inhaled the precious liquid, ridding his mouth of the last vestiges of the atrocity that... woman liked to call 'cooking.'

Looking up, blinking his eyes to clear them, for a moment he thought he saw his old comrades. The blue-haired half-elf was delicately pretending to eat his fiancee's food, then getting rid of it when he thought she wasn't looking; his blonde apprentice was making an overly dramatic production of choking on the food and spitting it up; the cook herself was standing over her brother and fuming, staff in hand and prepared to whack him...

...and then moonlight glinted off of twin swords and silver hair, and the image resolved itself into reality. The loudmouthed brunet replaced the sarcastic bluenet, the younger mage took his apprentice's place, the healer appeared where the other half-elven woman had stood.

He pushed back unexpected pangs of nostalgia. It had been thus once, but never would be again; it did no good to look back on the past. Setting the bowl aside, he stood, striding off a ways to the nearby oasis. They were due at the Fire Seal tomorrow morning, and the seventh of Sylvarant's Chosen would receive her wings and take her first step toward becoming Martel's vessel.

There was no turning back.

"...really, have you even tasted your own cooking?!" a petulant voice demanded from behind him.

_Whack_

"Hey!"

A ghost of a smile flitted across his face, so fleeting that anyone watching might have thought it a product of their imagination.

How odd, that such a pair should turn up now of all times, when it was this Chosen that showed the greatest resemblance to Martel, when this was the most promising chance to have the Four Seraphim side by side once more.

An uncanny parallel indeed...

-----

_Huh. Stupid idea wouldn't leave me alone._

_Yes, I'm working on my other stories. Soon. Soon. If you haven't read them, either do so or forget you read this. ;)_

_Remember to review, let me know what you thought._

_Yay muffins!_

_-Katana of the Jade Wings_


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